“Your neck [is lovely] with strings of jewels.”
– Song of Songs 1:10, ESV
Here the seeker’s “neck” represents our ability to obey. In the Old Testament, God often said that the Israelites were a stiffnecked people (e.g., Exo. 32:9). No one who just begins to love the Lord feels that he needs to obey. Instead, we all have opinions inwardly, while outwardly we put on “strings of jewels,” making our necks appear beautiful. Thus, we appear to be submissive, but in fact our submission is not real, and if we are asked to obey, we cannot, for we still lack the capacity to understand the price our obedience would require.
During a prevailing conference, hundreds of saints may declare their consecration to the Lord. For the most part, these declarations are just “strings of jewels.” Until the day our consecration is tested by the Lord, we won’t realize how hard our neck is. The seeker here appears to love the Lord, and she herself feels she loves the Lord, but in reality, that is not the case. Her appearing tender and submissive before others is just an outward string of jewels and is not out of the constitution of life. Before men she puts ornaments in her hair, and before God, she wears “strings of jewels.” No matter how her hair is plaited, however, or what she does to string jewels around her neck, God can perceive that she is still, at this point, just a “mare among the chariots of Pharaoh.”
Adapted from The Song of Songs: A Divine Romance, pages 50-51.
Thursday: “Plaits of Gold” (1)